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Dreams 16
Russel How ancient the find is, it seems impossible to tell. The artifacts are misleading, from many different periods in time. There are knapped flint arrowheads, statues cast in iron, dishware made of bronze. The broken buildings are nearly useless, but the whole ones have mosaics, fragments of painted murals, even engravings, all providing a wealth of information to the discerning archaeologist. As the expedition stays longer, though, everyone starts to get somewhat nervous -- on edge. You don't even notice the changes until it's too late. The signs were there, but you were too preoccupied, too disbelieving, to see it. There was the twitchiness, at first. Slight changes in voice -- pronunciation, timbre, pattern of speech. There were the flickering shadows at night, when the fire was steady, and the sudden standoffishness of most of the crew. Finding it increasingly difficult to sleep, you see the quiet conferences in the night, never the same three or four people, but always in close conversation, and distant from you. Then the night comes, when you wake suddenly, all your senses alert, but you hear nothing save the fire. Opening your eyes, the entire group is standing in a large ring surrounding your bedroll. Perfectly still. Perfectly silent. They step toward you, without a word, without an expression, the firelight flickering off still, impassive faces. As they crowd around, jostling each each other in their efforts to get close, you can see more clearly the shapes moving just underneath their skin, the writhing now visible even through clothing. Panicked, you start to scream, and they all seem to burst open, with things coming from their mouths, their eyes, through their flesh which tears like tissue. The last thing you see is the empty shells of your friends collapsing slowly to the ground as the eldritch swarm covers you, weighing you down, worming inside your clothing, and crawling past your screams down your throat. Very soon, you can no longer make noise, and the last thing you hear is the sound of a thousand tiny variegated mouths, relentlessly chewing in the darkness. Adams New York has decided to change the design for their famous New Year's ball once again, and you have been dispatched to cover it. The new look is a closely guarded secret, and speculation is running rampant. Of course you investigated, it's what you do, but all you could discover was rumours of some deal between the city council and some British industrialist. No clue as to his motivations. Money, or prestige surely, but does he deal in a new type of electric light, or a kind of glassmaking process, or could he possibly even be a steel baron? No one is talking. It seems that no one even knows, which stretches the bounds of your credulity. But the New Year has finally come, and you are covering the crowds. Everyone is expecting a larger turnout than ever, due to the publicity. You had gotten some hints that something was going to happen in, on, or around the Longacre building, but security was too tight to get in. So you've gotten to the roof of a nearby building, and are taking pictures of the crowd that has filled Times square. Just before midnight, the ball is revealed, lit from spotlights around the square. It has hundreds of electric light bulbs on it, shining through these mottled translucent green panes. At the same time, a man appears on top of the Longacre building, and projections light up the sides of the buildings, showing a man in white robes. His voice fills the chill night air. You can see the crowd, typically rambunctious with seasonal fervor, start to calm down, focusing entirely on the speech. As the man talks, the night sky begins to glow, even beyond the city light reflection off the clouds. The ball begins to drop, and behind it is a light in the sky, just as bright. When the ball hits the bottom of the flagpole, there is an incredible silent flash of light. You stumble around for a moment, waiting for your eyes to adjust, hoping you got a picture of something. When you can finally see again, the night is still glowing from the heavens, the man in white is still standing atop the Longacre, but the square is entirely empty. Not one person can be seen. And the face on the giant screens seems to be staring directly at you. He smiles, but there is no humour or pleasantness in it. He opens his mouth in a nerve-grating inhaling screech, and as he does, his voice is joined by a thousand others, out in the night, none of them even vaguely human. XianQi You are a better healer than Doctor Anthony. You know this. The way you have cured fevers and prevented sickness, made poultices and warded off the insidious dangers of the jungle, proves this. And yet, they keep going to him. He has learned new techniques, which appear to be even more efficacious than your own. Cuts and infections, quickly healed. Broken bones set and mended, ready for weight as soon as the next day. Impossible cures. Miracle cures. But then, things got more extreme. One of the camp crew got burned, severely, while cooking. Anthony collected dozens of frogs, skinned them, and now Fernando has a large patch of black and yellow skin, shiny and wet on his leg... but no burn. Priestley lost an eye to an animal attack, but soon enough it was replaced by one a disturbing yellow green, its iris long and thin. Matheson lost an arm working on the plane, but Anthony soon had it fixed with the long, sinuous, and suckered tentacle of a squid. Adams was gutted badly by attacking natives, but Anthony found a nearby hive and filled his belly with industriously striving ants. Now he is fine, but for the constant rumblings of hunger. In the next attack, Russel was beheaded. Thinking quickly, the good doctor brought forth an alligator, and swiftly made a transplant. Russel is difficult to understand now, but is much more formidable a leader. Finally, you were trapped when some of the old city rubble shifted, pinning you down and crushing you. The party got you out, but the ruin that had become of your legs was a horror to behold. Anthony told you not to worry, and soon enough, two men had dragged back to camp an enormous specimen of the anaconda. You were in intense pain, and weak, but it still took two to hold you down as he came toward you with a piercing expression of eagerness... and a bonesaw. Matheson You are in an enormous warehouse, or storage unit of some kind. There are endless aisles of dusty shelves towering into the darkness, covered with dust, and boxes, and shapeless lumps tied down with cloth, and crates of all sizes. A woman is guiding you. She is clad entirely in leaves and flowers, and her hair is made of feathers. She moves, graceful and quiet, down the dimly lit corridors, explaining some of the contents as you pass. "There is a battery made of clay, that works from seawater. Under that cloth is a construction of brass and gemstones, powered by the light of the sun, which will pull a large weight in a straight line. There are stones, of a special composition, which when carved correctly, can communicate instantly over any distance. You can learn all of this, and more. Come here --" She beckons, with a sharp-toothed smile and eerily glowing eyes. She leads you to a storage room filled with books with flaking bindings, rolled scrolls yellowed and cracked with age, stacks of crumbling clay tablets, even faded stone steles. She hands you one of the tablets, its surface deeply inscribed with a spidery script. She starts whispering strange words in her soft alluring voice: "Fornik Phthashen chuth m'gorggen, p'oorlock ghashth mentrakl graantz, arklem mithgan p'nuntr." As she finishes, a slim claw emerges from the tip of her finger, and pulls a line of blood down your neck and chest. Suddenly, the thin wandering lines coalesce into recognizable words, and you are immersed in the instructions for building a solar smelter, using an array of cut quartz crystals. The leaf woman smiles again, sharp teeth glinting in the dim light. "I can teach you to understand all of this, if you want." You look around at all the records surrounding you as you fade into wakefulness. Category:Dreams Log